


Interlude #1: Priors

by asmodeusyne



Series: Republic of Infidels - Interludes [1]
Category: Republic of Infidels
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27895351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmodeusyne/pseuds/asmodeusyne
Summary: AU - Sergei and Rachel scenesPlease note these characters belong 100 percent to me, so don't screw around with them until publication, after which you can show me tribute with fanfic.Not until.
Series: Republic of Infidels - Interludes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042635
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

The heat was killing him. It was dry as a desert up in the altitudes of these ancient, unmatched mountains, but the air was thinner. Sergei always took a couple of days to grow accustomed to it. He hated the feeling of needing to catch his breath after the physical tasks that he normally performed without breaking a sweat. His father claimed it was good training for him, and it was true. He would have an advantage when he returned to earth again.

He ordered his patrol to go on without him, then headed off down into one of the steep, narrow valleys. The shade of the rhododendrons trees offered some relief. They were pink and purple, and he had been informed that they were beautiful. He supposed that they were, but they didn’t seem to lift him the way they lifted others. Just as Everest, that looming knife in the back of human folly, did not move him. It was tall. It was aesthetic. But he wasn’t compelled by it beyond that. It meant nothing to him as a monument. He pressed on down the gully, moving from rock to rock.

When they were young Vikram had told him once that he was different than other people. He could not feel things that other people felt. He had not said it in judgement, merely in recognition. Vikram had that gift. He liked to study dangerous things up close. Sergei tolerated it, knowing that Vikram was not investigating his psychiatric condition for its own sake, but assessing his usefulness. He would offer Sergei something for it eventually.

Rachel, on the other hand, seemingly had no use for him. One day eight years ago she had seen him throw rocks at the vultures and decided he was a base, unworthy nuisance. She had not changed her opinion since, choosing to ignore his presence, or else dismiss him, turn away from him, almost never bothering to look him directly in the eye.

At first he’d wanted to punish her. He might have given into that impulse had Vikram not carefully but firmly imposed himself between them. Sergei had suppressed the desire to simply shove him aside, aware that Vikram had something, some secret power, and that he, Sergei, might want some of it one day.

So at first, he abstained from tormenting Rachel for that reason. But as time went on, as he saw her grow and change over the course of the summer, he felt an unidentifiable ache when he thought of her. Her proximity, her acid wit, her unfathomable intellect, even her contempt of him, it all affected him inside in ways that nothing else ever had. She was his Everest. When he had finally realized it, it was like a punch to the stomach. He wanted her so badly, that it made him hate everything and everyone else that much more. It eased when he was away. But now he was back.

And now, he was sweating. Finally, pushing through a thicket of flowers, he arrived at what he was looking for. A shallow, perfectly clear Himalayan lake, hidden down between these wickedly steep slopes. It was glacier fed, a crystal blue of a colour he’d never seen anywhere else, and still as glass.

It did stir him, but only because of the anticipation of its physical relief. The coolness, the pleasure of the water on his bare skin, that was something he could understand. But for all that its beauty was identifiable to him, thanks to Vikram’s instruction, he may as well be blind and deaf for all the effect it had on him. He could experience base pleasure, tactile pleasure, and the pleasure of violence, but not the majesty of this thing he know he ought to enjoy.

He stripped off his shirt and trousers, removing his briefs, letting the thin air evaporate some of the sweat. He was in peak physical condition, and he slid into the water easily, making a shallow dive and staying down as long as he could manage. He gasped for air as he broke the surface and scanned the area.

And that was when he saw Rachel, spread out on a slab of rock with a chemistry book. Her narrowed eyes flickered over the top of the book, and he knew that she had watched him undress, and had made a calculated decision to remain instead of doing what she normally would have done, which was leave.

He smiled to himself, and decided to test his theory. He dove back under the water, and swam in her direction, surfacing a stone’s throw away. He pushed his hair back as he rose to his feet, moving gracefully over the smooth surface of the weathered stone under his feet.

He walked directly up to her, casting his shadow over her as he moved closer. She eyed him with her usual disdain, but her eyes remained on him, moving over his body, head to foot, and no sparing of what lay between.

“Why don’t you come in?” he asked her. “It’s cooler.”

She held his gaze, imperious for a moment. She was lovely, but a little forbidding when she looked at him this way. She had queenly cheekbones, wide brown eyes, and a full mouth a few shades pinker than her creamy cinnamon skin. At eighteen there was still that softness at the edges, but he could see that in a couple of years it would recede, and she would be as fine boned as a marble statue.

“I was thinking about it, before you came along,” she said, setting down her book and wrapping her arms around one bent knee. “But then you came along.”

He eyed her, a little unsettled by the intensity of her hard, obsidian gaze. Then he glanced away, as though looking for a comeback somewhere in the middle distance. Then he met her eyes again.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

She arched a brow. “Why do you like to annoy me at every opportunity?”

“You never wanted to know before.”

“I don’t now, really,” she said. But there was something, a twitch at the corner of her mouth.

He felt a sudden sting of understanding. “You like it.”

“Like what?” he expression was quizzical.

“You like rejecting me,’ he said, now feeling a frisson of irritation.

“If you say so,” she said coldly, rising to her feet. “This was a peaceful place to be until you showed up, and now I have to leave, which I am not now enjoying.”

“Then don’t,” he said, surprised at the sudden weakness in his voice. “Stay. Read. Ignore me, I don’t care. I just came here to cool off.”

She glanced at him, her long black hair lifting with a slight breeze. Then she looked at him, really looked, made him feel every ounce of her weighed gaze.

“What would Vikram say?” she wondered mockingly, then seemed to regret saying it in his hearing.

“Who gives a fuck?” he snapped. “He’s not here.”

She hesitated, then backtracked a few steps. Then, as she looked at him, he saw her sudden apprehension. Not fear, but cautious evaluation, the weighing of variables, and the feeling of being measured in this way suddenly sent his hackles up. Biting back his rage, he turned away from her and walked back into the cool water. He suddenly hated her, and hated his own inability to recognize desires in advance that were perfectly recognizable to her, and within her natural ability to moderate.

“Sergei,” she said, and the sound seemed amplified by the flat water.

He turned to see her on the shore’s edge, pulling off her tank top, and stepping out of her khaki shorts. She wore a sports bra and a pair of black panties underneath, and while they were not excessively revealing, it was more of her than he’d ever seen before. She was toned, athletic, graceful in the hips, with muscular legs, with a kind of wiry strength that, to his mind, could be trained into real combat ability.

He felt himself go rock hard in an instant, had to restrain his hand from going to his erection. She chose a spot and made a clean dive, slicing into the water like a dolphin, breaking to the surface a couple of feet from him. Her black hair slicked over her head, clouding where it dipped into the water.

She moved closer to him, treading water, her face lit up by the light reflected off the water.

“You’re right,” she said, grudgingly.

He tilted his head, hardly hearing her words. “What?”

“It’s cooler here.”

He blinked. Now she was looking at him in a different way. Like she was calculating a wholly different equation. It wasn’t an emotional one, but there was something in her expression that made him feel like he was being dissected. Was she just cataloging the meat on his bones?

“What are you doing, Rachel?” he asked finally, his desire for her twisting in his belly, his inability to act on it twisting like a knife.

“I’m deciding,” she said firmly. “Weighing the pros and cons of being physically intimate with you. On one hand, you’re a proven fellon, if an unproven homicide, and letting you get that far with me could have a range of terrible consequences.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. Her flippancy was needling him, and her closeness, the water droplets on her brown skin, the faint salt smell of her sweat, was beginning to make him insane.

“On the other,” she continued, kicking her legs to stay afloat.

“The other?” he pressed.

“There really is no other,” she admitted. “You say that you care about me, in spite of your limited faculties in human empathy, and it would be foolish to trust that to protect me...especially if I didn’t - and I don’t - have those feelings for you.”

“Oh,” he said, understanding suddenly. “You’re bored, you want someone to play with, and I’m the most convenient.”

She lay back, floating on the surface, eyes bright with the reflection of the blue sky. She was silent for a long moment, and when she spoke, she didn’t look at him.

“It’s not because you’re convenient,” she said, and then seemed to struggle with some distasteful admission. “You aren’t….boring.”

He swam over to her, his feet finding a slab of rock that allowed him to stand partially out of the water.

“Not boring? That’s the best I can do?” he demanded.

She too rose from the water. She looked him over, cocked her head to the side, then turned away. Wordlessly he watched as she swam back to shore. He watched her lithe body move in calm, measured strides as she gathered up her book. She didn’t look back as she slid in among the trees, and disappeared.

Sergei stared after her in disbelief. Then he put his face in the water, and screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

One Year Later

Sergei sat on the corner of his bed and sloshed back the vodka, not really doing it for any other reason than to have something to occupy him. Every communication device, television broadcast, mobile signal, had snuffed out like so many digital candles. The internet, was, of course, gone. All the world had been swallowed by the ocean, except for this one little island. Already they were calling it Himalaya, a nation of exiles and refugees. 

And yet, as his summer residence since the age of 13, it felt as much like home as anywhere ever had. It mattered little him whether he was in Moscow, or Siberia, or here in the Alpine Guard barracks his father had built on this brutal mountain.

He picked up his phone, and opened his photos, scrolling through them. He didn’t have very many, so it didn’t take long for him to reach the photos from several months ago. Several months ago was the last time he had seen Lydia.

_She’d texted him, asking him to come over. She’d been seeing someone, a much older man, married, and it seemed as though he had decided to end it with her. She wanted Sergei to come console her._

_He hadn’t seen her in a while. She’d been drunk by the time he arrived, on a bottle of her favourite Moet, and a half dozen vodka tonics. It was clear she’d anticipated having a night out with her beau, because she was wearing a spectacular vinyl white dress that lifted her breasts and emphasized her hips, a pair of white spike heels hanging from her feet as she slumped against her kitchen bar._

_She was twenty-five now, beautiful as ever. And he too, three years later, had sharpened at all his edges. At twenty-one, he had long ceased to be her student. Now he could teach her a thing or two, but she wasn’t that kind of girl. And he liked her unblemished. Mostly._

_“What took you so long?” she muttered, sulkily._

_He looked at her, cocked his head to the side. “How much did you spend on that dress?”_

_She blinked. “What?”_

_“How much, Lydia.”_

_“More than you make in a year,” she sneered._

_He doubted it, but smiled anyway._

_“Good.”_

_He drew from inside his leather jacket, a switchblade. She stared, mesmerized as he walked up to her, holding it where she could see. Then, as he moved, she shifted on the stool, priming to get away from him._

_“Ah, ah,” he chastized, seizing her by the chin. She looked up at him, half fearful, half affronted._

_He slid the razor sharp blade right between her breasts, separating the vinyl so that they tumbled out, brown and plump, and perfumed. She let out a little gasp, that tiny sound of surprise that always delighted him, and she remained still for him as he drew the blade down, slicing through the dress until it fell away from her._

_She wore white garters, and white panties that matched nicely with her shoes. She’d clearly meant to make a night of it. No wonder she had summoned him. Foolish to let it all go to waste. He knelt down and kissed the garter, then sliced through it. Then he did the same to the other. She watched him, her face now flushed, as he carefully slid the knife up between her panties and the garter belt. He could feel her wetness soaking through, and suddenly he was bored of this game. He cut the belt, and buried his mouth in the soaked lace._

_She moaned, low in her throat as he pushed her legs open, making her straddle the bar stool. Her whole body, lovely rounded little belly, heavy breasts, quivered as he introduced the knife up under the wet lace. His eyes flicked up to her, and for an instant he knew she saw it, his urge to turn the blade, just so, to add a new colour to her palette. But no. He enjoyed her, owed her a debt for teaching him- how to give pleasure, how to really fuck a woman. It was enough that she knew this blade was not virgin. Her father had likely told her of his recent rejection from the Vor. Sergei was not a suitable Vory, it had been said, because he enjoyed the work too much._

_He let the blade drop, and slid his tongue into her thick, juicy cunt. Soon she was squirming, grinding on him like a cat in heat. He ate her until she came, making those tiny high pitched noises as her legs shook, as her clit swelled against his tongue. Before she could recover, he swept her up in his arms and carried her, and the Moet, through her bedroom to her bathroom, where the sunken jacuzzi would serve him better than her bed. He planned to get messy._

These photographs were from that night, the last night he had seen her. He’d taken video of her, drinking champagne like a dog drinking from a hose as he poured it on her. Images of his hand, calloused and pale, on her full mocha coloured ass. His cock inside her, veins bulging. His cock in her ass, her sob of ecstacy as she came over, and over for him. Her mouth sucking him, his come clinging to her face, her eyelashes. Lydia. Spoiled brat she might be, but she loved her fucking, and fucked like a champion. Dead, now, surely, along with the rest of Moscow, the rest of Russia. The rest of everywhere, except here.

Sergei had not taken these photos to recall the night in question. He remembered those nights. His body remembered them, as much as it remembered every neck he’d ever snapped. He’d taken them because, without her face, with only slices of her lovely brown skin, he could imagine that she was someone else. 

A few hours ago, Vikram had revealed the depth of his fear for his little intoxicated little sister. When Sergei had put his arm around her, he had intended only to carry her back to her bed, but the expression in her brother’s eyes, his hand on that burning piece of wood, told him that he trusted him not at all where nineteen year old Rachel, barely conscious, was concerned. 

It was that fear more than anything that made him realize the balance of power had shifted, forever, to his favour. And yet he didn’t know how to begin creating an advantage for himself. He had to admit, the world as he’d known it having ended in fire and churning seas had affected his equilibrium. Not emotionally, but logically. Lydia, dead, drowned, gone. It was, he thought, a shame. But he thought of her in terms of geometry and texture. She had been fun. Now she wasn’t fun any more.

He closed his phone and tossed it on the counter, and was about to take another pull on the bottle when there was a soft little knock at his door. He looked at it, then hesitated, tempted to reach for the pistol that he kept under the head of his bed. Then, the knock came again, this time a sharp little tap, more urgent. 

He opened the door, and there, wearing a long sleeping t-shirt with a silk screen image of some old grunge band on it, was Rachel. She stood with her arms around herself, her face upturned to his. She had the same skin tone as Lydia, but where everything about Lydia had been full and pouty, Rachel’s youthful face was already resolving into patrician beauty. Her eyes, so dark they were almost black, shimmered with tears. Her lips parted, her expression full of uncertainty. So unlike the girl he knew, the young prodigy, so gifted, so confident in her destiny. 

She said nothing, only looked appealingly at him. He moved aside without speaking, and she passed from the green and purple chaos outside, into his simple, brutal, venal world.

She stared at him. Rachel. His tormentor, his fixation, the only real object of his desire ever since her body began to soften, to curve. Hateful little Rachel, who looked down her graceful nose at him, who tossed her head proudly whenever she dismissed him from her sight. It surprised him that it hurt something in him to see her humbled like this.

“Rachel,” he said, just wanting to say it, to confirm this reality.

“Promise me something,” she said, and he could hear the tears in her voice, her stoicism fracturing at the edges.

He said nothing. Only listened. Waited.

“Promise me you won’t tell me everything is going to be all right.”

At a stroke, he understood why she was here. She could not, would not buy into the recovery that her brother was currently selling to the pathetic remains of humanity. Had he tried to deceive her into believing it? The pain of betrayal was so clear, and he suddenly felt the urge to go back up to the monastery and break Vikram’s face.

He looked her directly in the eye, and delivered not the promise she asked for, but the truth. 

“Nothing is going to be all right.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Her lower lip quivered, silent tears making tracks down her face. Her vulnerability disturbed him, but it also made his mouth water. He reached out, thumbed one of her tears away, and licked it off his thumb, tasting her salty, liquid despair. 

He smiled at her. “You didn’t come here for lies.”

She stared at him. She went from utter stillness to sudden movement, her full mouth suddenly on his, her long brown arms wrapping around his neck. One instant of shock held him back, and then he was kissing her back, pushing his tongue into her mouth, fighting her to see who could devour the other. 

He would have been pleased to have begun this gently, to place kisses on her cheekbones, her jaw, to tease the seam of her lips, to open her slowly to him the way he’d so often fantasized. But he knew she wouldn’t have it, that she wasn’t here to fulfill his fantasy, but to use him, to use his violence. So he gave it to her. He slammed her back against the door, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. While she gasped in air, he kissed her throat, drew his tongue against her pulse. She shuddered, and he felt it arc through him like electricity. 

He slid his hands under her t-shirt and lifted it off her, loving the way her breasts pulled up into perfect roundness as she raised her arms. He went down on his knees and sucked one breast into his mouth, biting down on her nipple while she grasped his hair tightly. He let one hand rest lightly just over the band of her simple black panties, wanting to pull them down, to lick her, taste the warm slick softness of her, but holding himself back.

But she wasn’t interested in foreplay. She dug her nails into his back, pulling up his wife beater over his head. When he felt her palms on his skin, felt her pushing him back, he shivered. He allowed himself to be directed, and fell back on his bed. She undid the drawstring of his linen pants, and pulled them down, and off. She then took him in whole, eyes travelling over him, no doubt identifying his dense muscle groups, down his thick muscled abs to his stiff cock, measuring the ten inches, the extreme curve, the thick end, against her own knowledge of what her body could take. 

As she slid her fingers around him, he knew instantly that she was virgin, though not the kind that was ignorant of her own pleasure. Her fingers were loose, gentle, exerting just a little pressure. Just enough to torture him, as she moved her hand up the shaft.

“It’s not going to break,” he told her. 

She was aroused enough not to respond with instant resentment. Instead, she straddled him, allowing her fabric-covered cunt to brush over the shaft. She looked at him, expectant, petulant, and he decided it was time to give her what she’d come for. He placed one hand at the small of her back, and leaned up, sliding the other down between them. He caught her panties in one finger, and slowly, effortlessly, tore them off. 

Then he supported her hips as she lifted herself, her gorgeous, delicate little cunt catching the head of his cock, then swallowing him whole. He loved her gasp, the way she threw her head back as her tight kegel muscles squeezed him. He moved with her as she began to ride him, to undulate her hips, to pull him deep into her. He could tell by the way her eyelids fluttered, the way she bit her lip, that she knew how to please herself, that she was learning quickly how to use him to give herself that pleasure.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, hardly able to find breath. 

He slid he hands under her ass and used his core to aid his thrusts up into her. He went deep, using his skill, his endurance, to bring her to the edge. 

“Come on, darling. Show me.” 

There was something so young in her breathless whimpering cries, ascending in pitch. He rode a hand up over her flank, slipping the other between her legs, applying just the faintest pressure on her clit.

“Come for me, Rachel,” he ordered harshly, playing her body until it obeyed. She groaned as she came, squeezing down on him, soaking his lower abs, his belly, his balls with wetness. The strength in her legs failed her and she collapsed into his arms, twitching with each aftershock while he whispered adoration into her ear, sending it into her mind while it was still empty from pleasure, when she couldn’t throw it back at him.

He slid his hand behind her head, holding her to him as he rolled her over, his cock remaining buried inside her as he mounted her. Her eyes fluttered as she looked up at him, now showing some recognition, and there, regret. Sergei only smiled. If she loved him, she wouldn’t be Rachel, and he wouldn’t care about her. He could love her expression as he gathered her wrists into one hand and held her arms over her head. Even intoxicated, a slowly manifesting hate began to take shape behind her eyes. Then he made one, deep stroke and found new depths inside her that he had not yet touched. She screamed. 

He kissed her to swallow the sound, and then did it again. He wasn’t going to come for hours. He was going use those hours by fucking her for all the times she’d ever denied him. 

“You didn’t think it would be this good,” he purred, sliding his hands down over her flanks, resting his thumbs over the graceful bones of her hips. “So cruel, Rakhila.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, her eyelids fluttering as he rolled his hips, teasing her with small strokes. 

“I was your age when I lost it,” he told her. “Just after I turned eighteen. It wasn’t until later that I met a girl who taught me how to really fuck. But she smiled. She laughed when I made her come. Not like you.”

  
“You want me to smile?” she breathed, incredulous. 

“No,” he said softly. “Not today. I know today hurt you.”

“But not you.”

He slid his hand down to the small of her back again, finding those taut muscles, tracing their contour. “Put it on me, gorgeous. All that pain. All that mourning. I don’t feel those things. But I don’t like it when you hurt.”

She frowned at him - was that pity in her eyes, or disbelief? He didn’t care. He bent down and kissed her, kissed her deeply, fucking her mouth with his tongue as he fucked her with his cock. She gave over to him, opening completely, wrapping her arms and legs around him. Clinging to him as though she couldn’t get close enough. 

“I can’t make it stop,” she whimpered, and the pain her voice streaked through him like a razor slash. His breath caught. He knew pain as the sensation when his flesh separated, did not register injuries to his soul, much less someone else’s. But her pain, her ceaseless, unending memory, the sudden loss of the world that had enough distraction in it to made it bearable, he felt that in his bones. And he knew that she was the first and last person on earth whose pain would ever mean anything to him. 

God how she needed him. Her voice was girlish, innocent in its pleading. He withdrew from her, and mounted her from behind, together on their sides, sliding deep into her, the curve of his cock pressing up against her g-spot. He slid one hand around her throat, the other down between her legs. He kissed the back of her neck as he tightened his grip, just slightly. 

She relaxed at once at the pressure from his hand on her neck. It fit easily in his fingers, and he could feel her blood pulsing against his palm. It would be nothing for him if he decided to end her. She wanted it. He increased his the pressure of his hand, and he felt rather than heard her sigh. He moved deep inside of her, and she moved with him, so slick it was staining his thighs. She really believed he was going to do it, and some shattered part of her loved him for it. 

He held her there, listened to her choking little breaths, feeling her tighten around him. God she was so wet. So close. Her breathy whimper rose in pitch until he knew that she wanted to come more than she wanted to end it. He released her throat and she came, squirting in an arc, her whole lower body clamping down on him like a vice. 

She was already weeping as she twitched and writhed, still gushing as he pressed his cock harder against her g-spot. She sobbed, anguished, ecstatic, as he continued to work her clit, holding her captive to the pleasure.

“Did you think I would let you go?” he whispered in her ear. 

She looked at him with her tear stained face, her red eyes. Her pouty red lips parted, so enticing that he had to kiss them. He kissed her even as he slid his arms under hers, holding them behind her back so that she hung forward from them, supported only by her knees. 

When he entered her again, she whimpered. He made her feel every inch of him, made her feel the dull pain as he hit deep against her cervix. 

“You know that I love you,” he told her softly. “I’ve always loved you. I don’t expect you to love me back. It makes me hard just knowing how much you hate enjoying this”

He picked up his pace, and soon she was moaning at the impact. Her breasts were nothing like as voluptuous as Lydia’s had been, but they were generous, and bounced in the air as she hung against his grip. He loved that she was letting him use her like a whore, loved the way she relaxed, let his strength support her as he sheathed himself inside of her over and over. She dripped on to his sheets, again coming beautifully for him. She held nothing back as she cried out. 

Finally, he released her and she fell forward into the pillows. He used a knee to roll her over, and again wrapped his hand around her throat. This time he did it to hold her in place. Using his other hand, he straddled her waist and made sure she watched as he stroked himself to orgasm, spurting his come over her shapely breasts. She helped him, bringing her shoulders forward to press her breasts around his cock. 

“Rachel,” he gasped. 

By the time he had emptied himself on to her skin, she showed signs of exhaustion. She lay back in the pillows and watched him through an intoxicated haze. How safe she seemed to feel, in his bed, his come sliding down her breasts, pooling in the hollow of her throat. She drifted into sleep, covered in his mark and too tired to care. He kissed her forehead and her mouth. In a half hour he would wake her again.


	3. Chapter 3

He watched her as she contemplated the lake, believing she was alone. It was starting to freeze around the edges, and its turquoise hue was not perceptible in the dark. He rustled the branches of the now dying rhododendron trees to let her know he was there. They were beautiful no longer. The world around him was ash, and it matched to him. He need no longer wonder why he did not understand its beauty. 

She turned and glanced over her shoulder, huddled in an oversized hoodie. Then looked away. 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, slipping his hands over her hunched shoulders. 

He wanted to kiss her, but she shrugged out of his grip, lost in her own miserable thoughts. 

“Did anyone see you?” she asked after a long silence. Her low voice that was edged with a faint shiver. 

“Of course not, princess,” he said gently, trying to reassure her. Then he reached out his hand to her. “Come with me.”

She looked it, hesitated. Then she slid her hand into his, so small. But he could feel the strength in those fingers, the hard, sharp little knuckles. She allowed herself to be led down the path, towards a ripple in the mountain valley that was almost invisible.

“Where are we going?” she asked, though there was little real curiosity in her voice. 

He said nothing, but moved down towards the narrowing of the shallow canyon. He felt her breathe in as she caught the slender slice of orange light against the grey rock. Wordlessly, she followed.

Inside the cavern was spacious enough to fit a medium sized house. It was lit by ancient oil lamps, and filled with a dense steamy warmth that was coming from a sunken pool at the far end. Steam wafted across the mirror still water, and above it a large Indian buddha, five times life sized, carved directly into the rock wall behind it.

In the space of a few days, moss and lichen had begun to grow on the walls and floor, creating a soft green carpet under foot. 

He could feel Rachel’s amazement, and that was more lovely to him than anything that surrounded them. 

“How did you find it?” she asked breathlessly, already shedding her hoodie in the warmth. 

“On patrols,” he said carelessly. “There are a half dozen of these shrines in different parts of the Crown. But this is the only one with a spring, and it was cold water, until…”

“Until a week ago.”

She moved towards the pool, which had been roughly cut by industrious hands a thousand years ago. It was approximately eight by eight feet square, deep enough to stand immersed. She knelt down to touch the water - it was hot, but not scalding. 

She turned to look up at him, to share something of her astonishment with him - but instead, he had already taken his hard cock out, and was stroking it into greater hardness. 

She sat there, looking up at him with a sudden resentment. No doubt, she hated him for showing her this sacred place, and then violating it almost at once. But seeing her dejected had put him in a violating mood. 

He moved closer to her, sliding a hand under her chin, using the other to lightly slap her cheek with his cock. 

“You’ve never done this before,” he observed. 

Slowly, eyes on him, she shook her head.

“I’ll teach you.”

To her credit, Rachel didn’t resist. Her lips parted on the head, and when he told her to be messy, she didn’t shy. At first she kissed him, the tip of her tongue flickering out to explore his shape, his texture. Then, she worked up some saliva and spit on him...then used that as lubrication for her mouth as she began to suck the head.

With an increasing lack of coherence, he taught her how to work him with her hand, how to take it deeper. He hurt her when he pushed against her gag reflex, and she prolonged the penetration of her throat until she couldn’t stand it. Before long, her chin was dripping with thick saliva, which had nearly the same consistency of his come. 

Then, all at once, her efforts seemed to synchronize. She found a rhythm, her gag reflex relaxed, and as her eyes met his, Sergei realized that the dynamic he had believed they shared was not what he thought it was. With his cock halfway down her throat, her eyes told him that she knew she had power over him. 

When she drew away, her smile was grim, satisfied, and he imagined his own expression must have changed. She drew her tongue along one of the bulging veins in his cock, kissed it, using the tip of her tongue to follow the pulse. Then she sucked on one of her own fingers until it was shiny with saliva, and slid it along his balls, under them to the seam of his ass, and before he could quite do anything about it, pushed it up into his ass. 

He gasped as she took him into her mouth and simultaneously pressed down on his prostate. Then she was sucking him, and sucking him, purring on his cock as she massaged his prostate, making his cock go so hard he thought it would snap off. 

Wordlessly, he tilted his head back, mouthing her name over and over as he throbbed inside her mouth. She waited for him to shiver, to seize up, so close to coming that he could taste it, and then she withdrew.

“Bitch,” he said when he saw her smile. 

She rose and walked towards the steaming pool. She stripped off her clothes, and slipped into the water before he could enjoy the view of her. 

“Well?” she said, looking back at him as she folded her forearms on the stone lip of the pool and rested her chin on them. 

He stared at her for a moment before coming back to himself. He pulled off his t-shirt and jeans, going slowly once he saw her looking, examining him like an expensive side of beef. She didn’t quite smile but he could tell that she did appreciate his body, that she had an anatomist’s understanding of his massive, tooled physique. 

He made his way to her, bent down and dropped into the water. It warmed him through, and he shuddered. He hadn’t realized that he’d been cold, too. 

She dunked herself under, and slicked her hair back over her head as she came up. Then she flowed into his arms, and he could feel her mound, brushing up against his again-attentive erection. 

“Fuck me, Sergei,” she said, and it was a command. 

He put a hand on the small of her back and pulled her to him, shoving his cock into her wet slit, sheathing himself in her so hard and fast that whimpered, and tears welled in her eyes. He smiled against her skin, feeling as though he’d shown her that she wasn’t the only one with power. 

“Like that, darling?” he asked her, laying his hands on her hips, thumbing the fine bones as he adjusted his pace to something slower, more languid. Then he increased it again, adding violence to the stroke. “Or like this?”

“However you want,” she breathed. “God, you’re huge.”

“How does it feel for you, lover?” he asked as he slowed down into a firm but measured rhythm. “This is only your second time.”

“It feels incredible,” she breathed, now bracing her hands on his shoulders, moving with him.

“You hate that it’s me,” he purred. “Don’t you.”

“Of course,” she panted. “But it doesn’t matter. If not you, then who?”

“What about before?”

“Before doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “Harder.”

He held her in place, flexing his core as he drove up into her. Her eyes rolled back, and he kissed her throat, wanted to mark her. Wanted others to see his ownership. But he resisted, instead moving lower, placing his sharp, bruising kiss where it would be hidden under a hemline. 

She cried out, and the sound echoed sweetly through the cavern. He loved that sound, loved that she felt safe enough here that she could be vocal. He pulled her up on to the lip of the pool. She pushed him back, planting her knees in the soft moss underneath, and rode him, dominated him, controlling him with her tight cunt. He thought of his early days, his Lydia, how well she trained him to suit her own pleasures. Now Rachel, eighteen, gorgeous, brown skin steaming from the hot water, used him just as well. 

And she was precocious. She had no self consciousness, used her lean muscles to aid her as she rocked on him, took him as deep as she could. He slid his hands over her wet flanks, and stared up at her as the water steamed off her body. 

“Rachel,” he gasped, unable to hold back, letting her take him whole. 

She fell across him, into his arms, breathing into his ear as she came, her whole body quivering. He moved deep inside her, forcing himself against her spasming, vicelike muscles.

“I love you,” he hissed in Russian, directly into her ear. She twitched, unable to resist or snap back. “And I don’t ever want you to love me, vicious little darling.”

When she looked at him, it was with baffled, helpless despair. He gripped her hair, forced her to look at him as he came, letting out a sharp sound like a man being stabbed. He arched into her, pumping come into her, and she took it for him without protest. Then he kissed her tears as they rolled silently down her cheeks. Tears like the tears of that night, unconscious, reflexive. 

“What did you think?” he asked her softly in the same language. “Did you forget who I am? Do you think that I need you to love me?”

She looked at him, her full mouth now set in contempt, her half-mast eyes disdainful. “I think that you’re sick.”

He laughed at her, pushing wet strands away from her face. “You want to cure me, doctor?”

Her expression fell further into a despair, the crippling self-pity that had led her to his door a few nights ago. 

She rose and went to gather her clothes. He watched her silently, aware that he’d injured her, but not quite knowing how to reverse it. Rather, he’d reminded her of a hurt that was greater to her than anything else she was feeling - her lost Oxford, her dream to become a physician. Petty ambition, to him, but to her, the place where she could put her torturous intellect to use. 

He sat up, did not try to intervene as she dressed. She spared him one glance - but he could tell she wasn’t seeing him. Then, pushing her wet hair back, she ducked out of the cavern and left him there. 


	4. Chapter 4

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“They’re not contagious,” Sergei pointed out as he set the rifle over to semi-automatic. He sighted down the rifle at the small gaggle of figures staggering pathetically over the dirt beach. Some of them had dark, shellacked looking skin. Some of them were inflamed, red faced, but not otherwise that much worse for wear.

“Their clothes and belongings are radiated.”

Vikram stood next to him, arms crossed around himself. He was clearly uncomfortable with this, but he believed that these people, even if they posed no danger to the healthier refugees, required this mercy, since there was no way to treat them. This also, Sergei noted, cut down on the number of hungry mouths, something Vikram had not mentioned. Not that he needed to. For all their differences, they were brothers in their ruthlessness. It was how they’d rubbed along so easily as boys, and now as young men. Though Sergei, naturally, had cultivated Vikram in part because of his desire for his younger sister. He wondered if things would change now that he’d achieved it. It remained to be seen if Rachel chose to reveal it. It was an unspoken agreement between them that he would not disclose their… whatever it was between them now.

Sergei raised the rifle and took aim. Behind him, his small team of five - the very beginnings of his army - followed suit. 

Bursts of fire echoed through the still air. Sergei aimed quickly, and efficiently, sending each of his bullets into their mutilated bodies. He thought back to the day on the range, when Lydia’s father had introduced him to the efficient pleasure of killing this way. He’d since undertaken to become expert, and rarely missed. A woman, who had tripped in the onslaught, fell to her knees. Sergei jerked the trigger, and felt a little zing of satisfaction as her head blew apart. 

When he lowered the weapon, he noticed Vikram watching him with an expression of disturbed distaste. It reminded him so much of Rachel that he had to smile. He shoved the weapon into the younger man’s hands. 

“It’s fun. You should try it.”

Vikram held the gun awkwardly in his arms, staring down at it. Then he dumped it into the back of the personnel truck, and walked up to the cab. Sergei looked up at his second - a rawboned woman named Angelika, also from Sakhalin - and shared a tight smile. The formation of this partnership had been difficult for Vikram, but necessary. Sergei found it amusing how easily the former diplomat could order deaths, but how unwilling he was to let go of the moral rules of the old world with his own, clenched, bloodless hands. 

Sergei made his way up to the driver’s side, and swung up into the front seat. Vikram curled in on himself as he looked out into the bizarre landscape. 

“How’s the salvage operation?”

Sergei started the engine, and turned the truck on to the high road. “Good enough. Personnel trucks, uniforms. Small arms. Mostly shipping out China, but everyone was increasing their materiel stock.” 

“Military?”

“Surplus.”

“What about military vessels?”

Sergei shrugged. “Lots of dead crews, no one left to unlock the navigation controls. They’re everywhere but they’re useless.”

Vikram nodded. Sergei could tell he was content with this - he didn’t want Sergei or anyone else to amass a navy. An army was already more than he bargained for, but Vikram, being Vikram, would find a way to make it serve his interests. And Sergei, who knew he needed Vikram’s unmatched supply, and who still held back the ace of Rachel’s complicity in his desires, felt it was also in his interest to let this alliance play forward.

One day he’d tell Vikram. He’d break his unspoken promise to Rachel, and tell her big brother just how good her cunt was, how beautifully she screamed for him. He’d tell him, right before he broke his bones like matchsticks. Though, he had to admit, Vikram was smart enough to foresee that eventual betrayal. It would be interesting to see what he did.

When he arrived back in the Crown, Sergei immediately wanted to find Rachel. He hadn’t pursued her since the second time, preferring instead to let her suffer her impossible longing for time to move backwards, until the pain became so acute that his would be a welcome appearance. 

Failing to find her in the expected places, he was surprised to discover her sitting on his doorstep, waiting for him. She was at first obscured from view by the chill upwelling of fog, but she rose as he approached, holding her arms across herself in that way she had when she felt threatened or annoyed.

“Where have you been?” she asked in a sulky, yet somehow entitled voice. Her eyes flicked to the AK-47 slung behind him. Then, they met his, narrowing. 

He smiled. Would she shy at the ugliness of his task, the way Vikram had? Would she, former physician in training, even care? 

He approached her, reached around her to open the door. Then he put one hand on her hips, the other on her shoulder, and backed her into his rooms, kicking his door shut behind them. 

She looked at him in faint confusion, and now he could smell the alcohol on her breath. He unslung the weapon, and set it against the wall. Then turned to his darling, and stroked her face with the knuckles of his shooting hand. 

“Feeling lonely, Rakhila?”

There was a pout in her voice. “Don’t call me that.”

“You’re very drunk.”

“What’s your point?”

He grinned. “Do you want to try something new?”

She looked at him through those half mast bedroom eyes, her lips pursing. Then she began to pull her clothes off, slowly, navigating the task with overmuch care the way a drunk would. 

“Yes,” she said. 

He set a bottle of water close by the bed as he positioned her on her knees, faced away from him. He began by kissing her cunt, licking it, sucking and kissing her clit. He reached forward and cupped her breasts in his hands, kneading them, twisting her nipples while she sighed, then whimpered when he twisted them harder. He stroked her body, letting her feel his warm hands on her skin, priming her, relaxing her for what he was going to do to her. 

“Let’s make it more interesting,” he murmured, reaching under his bed where waited a little ziploc bag full of red soviet stars. He held it up for her to see. 

“What is it?”

“MDMA,” he told her. “You’ll feel better about everything.”

He put one in his palm, and held it to her mouth. She hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she caught it on her tongue and ate it out of his hand. 

He slid his cock into her dripping cunt, fucking her slowly as he stroked her hair, as she began to fall into the lightness, the affection of the drug. As she began to sweat, he advised her to drink, and she did, following his instructions with a weightless obedience that made him lick his lips. 

As he fucked her, as she sighed, and told him how good it felt, how she could do this forever, he began to thumb her asshole. Her breath caught as he massaged it into relaxing for him, as he slid his thumb into it. 

“I’m going to fuck you here, Rachel. Tell me that you want me to.”

“I want you to,” she murmured, untroubled. “I used to have nightmares that you’d rape me like that.”

“I thought about it.”

He pressed his thumb deeper, adding two fingers to her cunt, stroking the nerve that divided her. She whimpered, almost sobbed out her pleasure at his attentions. 

“What do you want, Rachel?” he asked her softly. 

“Fuck my ass,” she begged. “Fill me. Use me. I don’t care.”

“I want you to care,” he whispered, mouth against her skin. “It’s better this way. You want it, but you hate that you want it. You hate that you love giving it to me. That’s better than taking it from you.”

“Please,” she breathed, and he felt something inside him twist as she moved her legs further apart, hindquarters raised for him. 

He brought the head of his cock to her ass, and slowly slid it in, watching her asshole stretch and bulge outwards around him, making her feel it as he forced open the ring of muscle until he was buried deep inside her.

She was so receptive, built so perfectly to be assfucked by his shape that she began to come without his even moving. And when he did start to move, to thrust into her, slowly at first, she began to weep. Not tears of pain, or loathing or despair, but tears of joy. The ecstacy worked on her, lifted her inhibitions and made her completely shameless. Completely his. 

He fucked her, gently at first, then harder, using her to please himself, striking her ass until it was red, as she begged him incoherently not to stop. She couldn’t stop coming, couldn’t stop weeping, her fluids draining out of her as the sadness, the rage drained out of her. 

She pouted when he pulled out of her, then cried out with pleasure as he turned her on her back and pushed his cock back into her asshole. He contracted his abs to help him go deeper, loving it as she gushed all over him. She smiled as she cried, laughing when he made her come, arching, fingers twisting in his sheets. And he knew it was an illusion, but he didn’t care. He’d die happy in this moment, with his lover fully submitted to him, joyfully so. He thought about suggesting this, that they go now, together. But it felt too good, the way she arched up to take more of him, the way she relaxed around him so that he could really ream into her.

When he was close, she reached for him, laying her hands on his abs, one hand moving up to stroke his muscled flank. Her eyes, black liquid eyes, held him as she fucked him back, as she squirmed under him, taking as deep as she could. He cried out with release, pumping into her, filling her come as she spoke in encouraging tones, yes, I want it, you own me. 

He withdrew, still ejaculating, and spewed the rest of his come on her tits, then her face as she opened her mouth for it. He jerked his cock into her mouth, giving her the last of it, watching her lick him clean. He felt like he was the drugged one. He loved her so completely, so perfectly, aroused by her weakness and vulnerability. He knew, in fact, preferred the reality in which she would reject this pliancy, but this moment in which she sucked him dry, asshole still gaping as he played it with her fingers, he would remember it forever.

When he fell back on his pillows, she cuddled up to him, like the come stained pet she presently was. She curled against him, pressing her face against his bulging pectoral muscle, still gazing out of drowsy eyes. 

He held her there for a long moment, gripping her by the hair, holding her in place with her cheek against his thumping heart. He didn’t want to let her go, let her slip back into her old self. But he knew he couldn’t keep her like this much longer. Not his Rachel. Untameable. Still growing her claws, even if she didn’t know it. 


	5. Chapter 5

She came to herself slowly, still floaty and light, but her self control and awareness were beginning to reassert themselves. Sergei’s hands moved on her body, gliding over her soapy skin. She felt sore from what they had just done, still sensitive. It was hard to believe she had come so many times, but she could still feel the echo of each orgasm. And now his hands on her were delicious.

“That feels good,” she murmured as she leaned back into him, almost too embarrassed to say the words.

He pressed his face against her neck, hot mouth on her pulse as his hands cupped her slick breasts. “You feel good. You’re a little darling when you want it badly enough.”

“Don’t ruin it,” she sighed. 

He nudged her legs apart with his knee, running his hard cock up along her inner thigh. They were just close enough in height that he could penetrate her like this. 

She gasped as he slid into her, his thick arm coming around her, supporting her, holding her against his chest as he went deep into her. 

She knew, dimly, that it shouldn’t feel this good. Not with this man, him not three hours from the killing fields. And yet she knew the hypocrisy of her own apprehension, that he might torture and murder someone else, but that he would never hurt her. She knew that in her bones. She didn’t know if she could live with it.

She moved her hand down between her own legs, finding her clit swollen against her fingers. Water pounded against her skin, and he let her head fall back against Sergei’s broad shoulder. He held her hips as he fucked her slowly, his kisses soft against her neck, her throat. It didn’t seem like him, this tenderness. He increased his pace, hip bones impacting against her ass, his cock sinking deep into her. 

She made herself come with only a few strokes. Then he was holding her up while she shuddered and twitched. Then she could feel that throbbing inside of her as his own orgasm broke over him, and his come pulsed into her, then leaked out, running down her inner thighs to drip and dissolve in the water.

She was shuddering by the time he carried her back to his bed. She knew dimly that she should leave, go back to her home, make her excuses. But she felt paralyzed by the weight of sudden darkness and self loathing. 

Sergei lay her down in the mussed bed sheets, and she pulled the cover sheet over herself, not to hide from him, but just to cling on to something. She looked resentfully at him as he went over to his fridge, and pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich. She watched him as he languidly poured himself two fingers, neat, into a highball glass, then take a sip, watching her over the rim. Naked, body still rosy from the heat of the shower, he could not have been more appealing. His chest hair, dark blonde, glistened with droplets, and his cock seemed to thicken under her gaze.

He smiled, that viper’s grin when he saw her looking, the one he used when he was satisfied that he had taken what he wanted. 

“You didn’t tell me about the comedown,” she murmured, pulling her knees up to her chest. 

“You’re not an idiot,” he said with a poisonous little chuckle. “You know how rave drugs work.”

She pursed her lips, and let her chin drop on to her knees. “But I’ve never used them.”

He came and sat down beside her, flat blue eyes evaluating her. Predator eyes, rarely blinking. He drank off the whiskey, then slid his hand into her hair and kissed her, feeding her the potent liquor from his mouth. She slid her arms around him, craving his warmth, his cock. Before, she had been willing to let him do anything to her because she was elated, disconnected. Now she wanted him because she needed to feel something. Anything. 

He gentled her, kissing her forehead, then her mouth as he slid his cock back into her. She squeezed it with her kegels, arched her lower back to find an angle where she could fuck him, where she could take him deeper. 

“Beautiful,” he murmured, letting his finger tips ride over her skin. “Waiting for you was agony.”

“Why didn’t you just rape me?” she wondered, but not with accusation. Petty distinction to a monster of his calibre. 

He kissed her again, this time biting on her lower lip until she whimpered.

  
“Because you would endure it. You’d recover. You’ll never recover from giving it to me willingly.”

He slipped his hand over her throat and she leaned into it, tensing all the way through, her nipples tightening. His other hand went over her ass, two fingers sliding inside, stretching her open, tugging at her gently, coaxing her ass into relaxing, even as he deepened his stroke. 

“Nineteen,” he breathed. “Why would you want to end it now, before you’ve really experienced this?”

When she came, it wasn’t the full body, mind bending orgasms of earlier, but it was enough to leave her in a fog of total passivity. Even her breathing slowed, stopped for a moment, and she sank down into it. She felt his palm as he laid his hand over her heart, and she felt herself inhale suddenly. Her eyes fluttered open, and she was dimly surprised to see an expression on his face that resembled, of all things, fear.

He pulled out of her, his erection subsiding. He’d need time to recover before he could ejaculate again, and didn’t seem to care. He got under the covers next to her, and slid his thick muscled arm around her shoulders. Then he kissed her forehead, mouth lingering there as he stroked her hair out of her face. It was strange, she thought. Like being nuzzled by a tiger. Only a tiger, governed by instinct, could not reach the heights of Sergei’s brutality. Then she remembered that all the tigers were gone, and she wanted to die all over again. 

She turned and pressed her face into his chest, feeling the warmth of him against her cheek. He stroked her hair with his deceptive tenderness.

“What do you think is going to happen?” he asked, though not demonstrating much investment in the question.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suppose there will be some form of society. Vikram seems to think so.”

He chuckled. “Vikram thinks he’s going to be in charge.”

She sighed sleepily. “He should be, if he wants to be. If it makes him feel better. I don’t see the point.”

“He thinks I should help him.”

Rachel looked up at him through half closed eyes. “Help him? You?”

He grinned. “That’s what I said.”

He lifted her chin and kissed her, tongue gently probing into her mouth. She kissed him back, sharing the moment for all the world as though they were really together, that they really wanted something more from this. Then she laid her head back on his chest and closed her eyes. 

“This has to end,” she whispered, almost too quietly to be heard.

“Everything ends, Rakhila,” he said gently, running his fingers through her damp tresses. “Everything and everyone.”

She hated him for being so right, but she was too exhausted to care. She fell asleep with the sound of his heartbeat against her ear, each beat closer to the last.


End file.
